IBM claims that it has made a noteworthy development in computer processors by creating a 2nm chip in its test lab.
The company says its test chip can improve power efficiency and increase performance by 45% over current 7nm commercially available products. The breakthrough also shows the data of increasing in energy efficiency while using 75% less energy to match current performance, IBM said.
The nm is the measurement of the size of the transistor and with a lower number usually indicates a leap forward. The computer chip industry used to use nanometres which are one billionth of a metre. This measurement is to measure the physical size of transistors. Today, the smaller transistor- a lower “nm” number, is widely seen as a promotion term to describe advancements of new generations of the technology, and a promise to better performance and lower power.
Today’s potential desktop chips are based on the 7nm process and became available worldwide until 2019 – which is four years after IBM declared it had cracked the 7nm process.
There are many possibilities with 2nm such as the tech could “expand” mobile phone battery life four times, and future phones might only need to be charged every four days.
With this breakthrough, the world could see another performance knock for computers in the coming years.